By: Arindam Banerji, Ph.D.
arindam_banerji@yahoo.com
November 23, 2003

Comment about Sarmila Bose, Assistant editor and columnist for Ananda Bazar Patrika and The Telegraph newspapers in India. (and a "Scholar" according to Pakistani newspaper)

There are people who justify the Jewish holocaust of fifty years ago, and we call them the worst kind of racists, today.

However, I have rarely seen an Indian try and sugar-coat, the killing of 3 million Bangladeshis in 1971 - but, I have seen exactly that today. In fact, Ms. Bose in her article goes further, she tries to credit the "bravery" of the perpetrators of one of the worst genocide in the last fifty years - a genocide that killed 3 million civilians in less than 9 months; remember, the Nazis killed 6 million jews in 6 years.

She writes about the Pakistani aremy of 1971: "the fighting men seem to have performed remarkably well against overwhelming odds. It is shocking therefore to discover that they were not received with honour by their nation on their return...the answers don’t lie in unthinking vilification of the fighting men who performed so well in the war"

This article by Ms. Bose is pure racist hatred http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_24-11-2003_pg3_5 passed off through selected readings - including nothing of the research of gendercide.org or even even hundreds of Bangladeshi and international writers, who have written about what the Pakistani army did in Bangladesh. Revisionist history by a woman who never fails to point out that her grand-uncle was Subhash Chandra Bose. But, in her selective perfidy, what she does not tell you, is what the Pakistani army actually did do: "The number of dead in Bangladesh in 1971 was almost certainly well into seven figures. It was one of the worst genocides of the World War II era, outstripping Rwanda (800,000 killed) and probably surpassing even Indonesia (1 million to 1.5 million killed in 1965-66). As R.J. Rummel writes,

The human death toll over only 267 days was incredible. Just to give for five out of the eighteen districts some incomplete statistics published in Bangladesh newspapers or by an Inquiry Committee, the Pakistani army killed 100,000 Bengalis in Dacca, 150,000 in Khulna, 75,000 in Jessore, 95,000 in Comilla, and 100,000 in Chittagong. For eighteen districts the total is 1,247,000 killed. This was an incomplete toll, and to this day no one really knows the final toll. Some estimates of the democide [Rummel's "death by government"] are much lower -- one is of 300,000 dead -- but most range from 1 million to 3 million. ... The Pakistani army and allied paramilitary groups killed about one out of every sixty-one people in Pakistan overall; one out of every twenty-five Bengalis, Hindus, and others in East Pakistan. If the rate of killing for all of Pakistan is annualized over the years the Yahya martial law regime was in power (March 1969 to December 1971), then this one regime was more lethal than that of the Soviet Union, China under the communists, or Japan under the military (even through World War II). (Rummel, Death By Government, p. 331.)

The proportion of men versus women murdered is impossible to ascertain, but a speculation might be attempted. If we take the highest estimates for both women raped and Bengalis killed (400,000 and 3 million, respectively); if we accept that half as many women were killed as were raped; and if we double that number for murdered children of both sexes (total: 600,000), we are still left with a death-toll that is 80 percent adult male (2.4 million out of 3 million). Any such disproportion, which is almost certainly on the low side, would qualify Bangladesh as one of the worst gendercides against men in the last half-millennium." - from http://www.gendercide.org/case_bangladesh.html

Ms. Sarmila Bose is quite unique amongst the Indian anarchist-Marxist press - unique for her open bigotry and hatred for Hindus and her fetid fetish for Islamic terrorists who kill Indians in the thousands. In short, she has become worse than the caricature that she intends to make of India and Indians in her writings.

Most Indian Marxist-communist writers tend to at least pay lip-service to the secular nature of Hindus and throw their ire, angst and venom at the people they consider "centre-of-right" and the pro-Indian nationalists. Ms. Bose suffers from no such ethical hang-ups - she openly impugns all Hindus as bigoted. In her writings on "Willing executioners", she draws parallels between present-day Hindus and Germans during the Nazi holocaust. Of course this is all made possible with the statistically "irrelevant" practice of generalizing based on singular personal experiences or point incidents.

Data, truth and statistics are not her friends - the Pakistanis know that and increasingly you will notice her writings on Daily Times. Not a coincidence, in my opinion.

Recently, she wrote two other columns. In the first one - "tale of two shahs" - she passionately argues on behalf of Syed Salhuddin - the leader of Hizbul Mujahideen - whose men, recently killed 2 children at Vaishno Devi and have been killing hundreds of Indians every year for over a decade. Continuing her tendency to not present any facts that dispute her pro-balkanization agenda, she recently wrote a paean to Musharraf. Her propaganda-puff piece about Musharraf, was timed to appear right during Musharraf's visit to DC. After all, what could be more desirous to the Pakistani terrorist elite than an Indian denigrating India and praising Pakistan, just when Musharraf comes begging for baksheesh.

But, all her previous work pale in comparison to her latest work - a glorification of the Pakistani army's doings in the 1971 war. Friends, - please let your friends know what this woman is trying to achieve - for an unbiased view on the role of the Pakistani army - please see http://www.gendercide.org/case_bangladesh.html 

Sullying Subhas Bose's name is bad enough, but praising genocide as bravery is a new low and should not be acceptable to any of us.

Arindam Banerji, Ph.D.